Black Twig Pickers and Jack Rose: Jack Rose & the Black Twig Pickers

Acoustic guitar virtuoso Jack Rose joins forces with the mighty Black Twig Pickers, one of America's finest contemporary bluegrass groups, for this new long-player on Beautiful Happiness. The recording style is busy, at times sounding like it's been laid down using a single mic, and this only conspires to give the album a certain Appalachian authenticity. Tunes like 'Little Sadie' and 'Soft Steel Piston' romp along with a slight coating of distortion as fiddle, guitars and makeshift percussion overload the tape, yet as lo-fi as the delivery occasionally sounds the standard of musicianship never fails to impress: Rose and his cohorts brilliantly replicate the archaic musical disciplines of rootsy Americana, with instrumental rags like 'Sail Away Ladies - I Shall Not Be Moved' sounding particularly fantastic. Longterm Rose fans will be pleased to find the modern-day Takoma-schooled classic 'Kensington Blues' given a fresh airing here with a full band arrangement, and likewise 'Bright Sunny South' (from Rose's early work as part of Pelt) makes a welcome appearance. Brilliant stuff.

-- Boomkat